The Journey from Long-Term Rentals to Owning a Hotel

Okay people, welcome back to the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives host the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence so you can go out there and get yourselves more direct bookings. We do a mini series on this podcast where we dive behind a successful and interesting host and sometimes we welcome them back as well to give us an update. And that's exactly what we're doing today. We've got the amazing Josh Goldstein. He is all the way from California in the USA and we had him on last year where we were talking about various aspects of short term rent, all challenges and things like that. He mentioned he had started a fund and we're getting an update on what he's been doing and also things which are going on in his world. So I'm really excited to dive into his world again and yeah, share with you that update. So welcome along, Josh. Welcome back.

Thanks. Thanks for having me back.

No worries. So there'll be several people listening to this for the first time. So can you give yourself an introduction to you and your business and where your properties are located?

Sure, yeah. I, I basically started learning about real estate, I don't know, probably 2017 and dove into podcasts and books and webinars and started going to meetups and, you know, as much as I could and, and I was in analysis paralysis for a while and brought me around. You know, I did actually make some several offers but backed out over minuscule amounts of money which I learned now may, may not have been the best choice. But it's okay. It was my dream. Then in, in 2020 I pulled the trigger on my first properties which are with long term rental in Kansas City, Missouri. But then shortly after that I found the short term shop with Avery and listened to her podcast on Bigger Pockets and kind of contacted her and started buying cabins in Smoky Mountains, Tennessee and kind of grew to a portfolio of 11 short term rentals, five of which are still being renovated, which I'm very close to being done. And that's exciting because I want to get those off the plate of sucking money versus gaining money. And then I have nine long term rentals. And then the newest addition is as you mentioned, the fund, we actually acquired a hotel which is 76 Keys in Bentonville, Arkansas. So that's a different process and different things to look for and kind of different strategies, but it's fun and much bigger, so it's nice to grow.

I mean, that's amazing. And I'd forgot myself how much you've got going on, which is Amazing. So I'm sure everybody else enjoys that update and there's so much learnings that we can take from each and every part of that portfolio and the journey so far. But the, the one thing as well that I'd like to draw people's attention to is what, what you did before this is, it's an interesting sort of career that you've had before this as well.

And yeah, you use past tense but I, I actually still currently do it. So I'm a producer. I do commercials mainly, but I've done some movies, I've done some documentaries, I've done tons of music videos, TV show I worked on a long time ago, stuff like that. But yeah, I mean it's, it's a job I really like. So I'm not the investor that's looking to get out of his job. It's more I want to supplement and since I'm freelance, be able to say no to, you know, however many projects in a row and go on a trip with my, with my family and have a little bit more freedom. So that was kind of the ultimate goal for me. And you know, I love it and have been growing and trying to push it as much as possible. So we'll see where it leads. But as of now, I'm not looking at stopping my current job because I do actually enjoy it quite a bit.

That's really cool. Really nice to hear. So what we'll come straight on is your, the journey that you've gone on because you've gone from that, that first property as you mentioned, what has led to the changes in then going well, hang on. If we get a fund together and then let's go for a hotel instead of just sticking to short term rental. What, what's the aspiration behind that?

Well, with everything that we learned and my three other business partners, we each came from short term rentals. Some of my other business partners have done boutique hotels before. We wanted to create something where other investors could join in. It's all a bit of an education thing. If they do want to be involved in like look over our shoulders a little bit and ask questions and have access to all four of us. It's a thing that they could do and kind of learn hotels on their own because it is different. There's similarities for sure. You're in the customer service business business, but it's a different asset. So you have to treat it differently. You can't. I mean, I guess if it's small enough you could treat it as individual rooms and, and Airbnb, you know, short term rental, direct booking, however you're going to list it. But it's 76 keys. So that's, you know, someone on site all the time, cleaning people on site all the time, maintenance people on site all the time. And the systems are totally different. Right now we're in a franchise agreement with Wyndham and it was in that agreement when we bought the hotel, we negotiated at the purchase that we would keep it for 12 months. And we already in the purchase paid out the cancellation cost because if you break a franchise, there's going to be cancellation costs. So after 12 months it gets broken because we've already paid it. And then we can renovate and rebrand it as our own, use our systems. Right now we have to use the internal Wyndham booking systems and stuff like that. So right now we're a little bit handcuffed. But I gotta say, it's a budget hotel. It's booked all the time, it's still making money. So it's not that bad. Like from day one, we just took over the systems that were already in place and started making money and we fixed up some things. So we're like spending the money on the hotel and improving it. But the real change is going to come when we break that franchise and kind of improve the rooms and make it more than a low budget stay. Nice.

What, what is the plans? If you don't mind me asking, then how is, how is things going to change?

Yeah, so right now it's a, it's a Microtel by Wyndham. And I don't know if you or the audience is familiar with that, but it's, you know, it's, it's just a very basic hotel room with not many amenities and there's not much design. You kind of have to stick within the box that they tell you this is the furniture you can buy from us or from our, you know, like our dealers and stuff like that. Whereas, you know, we're, we come from short term rentals and we like to push the limit of design. We like good furniture, we like a little bit more luxurious things. So we're not allowed to do that with the current rooms, even though we do. We did take a couple rooms offline and we're doing test renovations. And so basically what that means is we'll go in there and we're going to design it how we see all the rooms are going to look. And that's, you know, maybe a design wall on the back. And we did do it. We did like wood slats behind the bed, we did nicer beds, we took out the carpet, we put in lvp. We're updating the bathrooms, we're updating the furniture so that when you go in there, yes, still the same box, still the same structure, which is not that old of a building. So structurally it's fine. It's just the look of it is not great. But now when you go into these new, newly renovated rooms, you, you know, people will be a little bit more wowed when the picture, when they look at the pictures, when they look at the overall thing, they'll be a little bit, you know, more wowed. And on top of that, we're going to start to bring some amenities. We have extra land on, you know, around the parking lot and so we've discussed building some pickleball courts. We've added, you know, a breakfast bar where, you know, guests can come down and participate in, you know, better breakfast than, you know, like, I think they had like a little grab and go section. But we're, we're improving that. We're going to do a little area for food trucks. We're just going to make it more appealing and kind of the overall experience just elevate it so that we could charge more and boost the value of the entire asset.

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How did you decide on that particular hotel? Was there many looked at overall or was it one that as soon as you sort of come across it, you're like, hey, this could be the one.

We were looking at a lot. Two of our partners live in Bentonville, Arkansas, which is where it is. And if you know about that area or if you don't know about that area, it's the headquarters Walmart. And the growth in that town is, it's bonkers. It's, it's almost like they, they compare it to a young Austin like Didn't you wish you invested in Austin 10, 15 years ago? Right. That's kind of their, their mentality. And the reason why is the family members of Walmart, in their will, they have to invest a certain percentage of their wealth back into the city of Bentonville. So by doing that, you know, Alice Walton is, who's one of the daughters who's, who's, you know, she's older now. Like Sam Walton had passed away quite, quite some time ago. I think she's in her 70s. She's worth, I think 55, 60 billion dollars. And she loves art. So she built the most phenomenal art museum. It's, you know, it was like over a billion dollar project. I've walked through it. It's amazing. And it's like a world class museum. And then another son loves mountain biking, so he decided to create like a mountain biking mecca in the city. So the trails there are phenomenal. And now like all the hotels, you know, there's bike storage, there's bike rental places, there's, you know, like all these different things that like a mountain biker who jumps into the town can go. Whether they bring their own bike or they rent a bike, it's all set up for them. They call themselves the mountain biking capital of the world. And you know, I've rented bikes there before and it's so much fun and they make it easy. It's just like they have novice trails, they have medium, they have hard, and it's awesome. And they're connecting all their surrounding cities with biking trails, so you don't actually even need to get into a car. And, and at this point, you know, there's still a lot of undeveloped areas. Right. But the center of Bentonville is getting very developed in terms of like really nice houses. They still have a very small town square that's cute and, you know, like charming, but around it are multimillion dollar mansions. And then you spread out a little bit more, then it gets a little bit more typical Southern and it's cheaper prices, whatnot. But the town over which is Rogers, is also developing quite a bit where you're starting to see the nicer coffee shops and the nicer renovated, you know, houses and stuff like that. And our hotel is almost in between Bentonville and Rogers. We're on the edge of Bentonville, so it's still a Bentonville address, but Rogers is up here. So I feel like the growth is going to meet in the middle where our hotel is. And so with that growth, it's just going to, you know, in 10 years. I can't even imagine what, what it's going to look like. It's, it's, it's kind of crazy there.

That sounds exciting. Do you know what I love about that is the fact that they're making their town one. The initiative that town's got to say, hey, reinvest back into the town. Which is fantastic. I think that's something which we need to see across many towns across the globe. But the other thing is that all of these awesome things that they're putting in place, which is then drawing crowds of people to come and visit, the growth is obviously going to be there. And the fact that you and your business partners have thought about this and that's why you're investing in there, it goes to show that once you've identified the markets which are growing in places where you can see the demand, it is then just finding the property that fits the criteria, isn't it? So that's amazing to see.

They're doing some fun things like they're doing music festivals and part of the music festivals will have a film festival and, and they're bringing in big names because they have the Walton family behind them. They're spending a lot of money to attract the great talent and they're. And, and that's how they kind of see themselves in Walmart too. If they're going to attract the high level executives, the best talent to come and work for them, they need to create a town with the best schools, with great hospitals, with great, you know, amenities, hotels, restaurants, stuff like that. So they're developing all this stuff to attract high level talent and smart talent that will be willing to move there.

Well, they say Rising Tide floats all ships and that sounds, that's exactly what's, what's happening there is they invest more there, more businesses and more people flock there, which, which means opportunities for everyone, doesn't it? So that's amazing to hear. I mean, overall, this sounds like an amazing sort of pivot within the business. When you look back to when you got your first rental, would this, what would that person say to you right now about how far you've come in the short time? I mean, we're not talking long. How many years has it been?

I mean, I got my first long term rental, 2020. And then the short term rental was January 2020. Then the short term rental was the day everything shut down, like March 2020. So it's been, you know, three years.

Three years.

Wow.

Wow.

I, I think that person, you know, like, I definitely dream big And I, I take action to, to kind of follow that up. If I would have told myself back then that in three years I'd own a Porsche of a hotel, I, I, I mean that wasn't even in the scope. I think at that time I was just thinking, hey, I'm gonna build small. Like one of the things that was hard for me to get past was in the long term rental game. When I'm analyzing these deals, if I'm netting a hundred, two hundred dollars a month, that was hard for me to get over, you know, because a hundred dollars a month extra a month, I mean it's great, but it's not changing my life at all unfortunately, you know. But the thing that I tweaked my mindset and how I got over that and what made me pull the trigger and then led me onto this path of accelerating my, my, my cash flow with short term rentals and you know, moving it past that is okay. If I'm getting a hundred bucks a month in my mind I would easily spend a subscription on like a streaming service or, or something else without even thinking about it by spending 50, $100 a month. And I'm like, okay, well if I start collecting these houses, I'm going to reverse the flow of me, you know, being easily just starting to spend that money, which I've got a little bit better on that. But it was that plus thinking about each one of these houses and these assets as a little bank account. So even though I'm getting only a hundred dollars in my bank account a month, the loan's being paid down, the value still there. So that's growing. Even though it's not in my bank account, it's growing every month, every year. And the value hopefully is going up as well. So you know, it's like, and then on top of it, the tax benefits and whatnot. So, so I think I had to mentally tweak myself past that $100 a month to get to be able to take action and be more excited about it. That's kind of what started me that train down the down the rail.

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What tips can you share? There'll be others listening to this, just going, you know what? I'd love to get into boutique hotels, I'd love to get into starting a fund. What tips can you share from your experience would you share with them that may help them on their journey?

Well, boutique hotels, I would say find people that are doing it and, and learn from them and, and you know, whether that's like a mentorship program or just someone that, you know, someone, whatever. Like, you know, some way to make a connection, whether it's through a meetup or, you know, like you don't have to spend money on it. I'm not saying you go out and definitely get a mentor because they're good ones and not so good ones, whatever. There are definitely other ways to do it because there are meetups, there's free information out there. Just like I jumped into short term rentals and know anything about it. I went to meetups, I talked to people that did it. I didn't get a mentor. I listened to podcasts, I listened to webinars. So if all that information is out there, you know, go to the conventions because you're bound to find someone. Whether there's a talk on it or just chatting at the meetups within the convention, you're going to find people that are doing it because boutique hotels, they operate differently. So just because you have like one or two cabins or houses that you're renting out short term doesn't mean it directly translates in. There's, there's differences. You know, it's a, it's a different business, even though there are similarities. So I, I think it's just fine. People that are actually doing it and get in with them and, and chat with them and you know, see how they're doing it.

And you're one of the differences you mentioned. And by the way, you're, you're inspiring to listen to Josh on the basis of I, you know, I'd love to go and visit this, this town where this hotel is and putting yourself out there, you're getting opportunities back, which is very clear that you're, you know, you're putting yourself out there to be in the right place, to accept these opportunities and create these connections and relationships with other people, which is amazing. One of the things that you mentioned was different is obviously the how they run between short term rental to hotels. Is there a software difference particularly that you use or is there various different softwares compared to your short term rentals versus your hotel?

Absolutely. So, you know, in short term rentals, I mean, obviously Boost Lee helps people do direct booking sites, which I have, and that's maybe how we, we initially connected and stuff like that. So there's that, there's Airbnb, there's Verbo, there's Booking and then there's property management softwares that manage all that sort of stuff. The difference with hotels is, well, at least for ours right now we have to use Wyndham's software, which is not the greatest. We have no choice until the franchise is, is broken. But it is what it is. They have their proprietary software. We're sticking with it until the franchise is broken. Once we break it, we're going to use a program. I think the one that we chose is going to be cloud beds. So it's almost like a property management software, but it's more geared towards hotels. And you know, there's differences in. My partner that does operate the hotel could get a little bit more into the weeds of like the exact differences. But you know, like you enter in how many keys you, how many rooms you have at your hotel and so you could even set like the staff that's there and which time and so you could, you know, if people are checking out, the, the cleaning staff knows when to go and, but they're already on, on, on site. But it's a, it's a way for them to track on their phone as well because it pushes the information to them. Just like we have our property management software that pushes to our, you know, cleaners that are anywhere in the country or the world really. But this is all inclusive in, into a hotel. So that's, I'd say that's the biggest difference in terms of management software.

That's cool. And cloud beds was the one that was coming to my mind for hotels. Many people that we know in the industry use cloud beds. And like I say, it's just, it's just a different type of software compared to a standard pms, isn't it? For many short term rentals. So that's really cool and thank you for sharing that. What does the future hold then? I know we've not had a huge amount of time today to discuss all the different aspects of your business, but what does the future hold for your business, Josh?

Well, as I mentioned, I am finishing up a renovation of five cabins that are all on one piece of Property, I'm very close to finishing it. So I really want to push to get that up and running and actually make money on that. Once I recover from all those renovation costs, I'm going to, you know, search around for either more hotels, whether that's within the fund, or just personally and more short term rentals. And, and to be honest, I still like long term rentals. I still have my properties in Kansas City because I kept building that as I was b buying short term rentals because as I'm actively working on the hotel and the, and the short term rentals and the renovations of the short term rentals, whatever the Kansas City ones, once they're up and running. And I recently switched my property manager and she's fantastic. So I'm super happy about that. It makes it so much easier because it's almost on autopilot, you know, like you still have to check in, you still have to stay on top of things. But my property manager is doing the bulk of that and it's amazing and the money just keeps coming in. So I would not mind building that portion of my business as well. I love it.

What resources would you suggest to people? You mentioned, you know, there's people, there's podcasts, there's maybe books. What resources would you suggest to people? Listening to go and check out that's helped you along your journey?

I mean, I started well, I think the first book I read was Rich Dad, Poor dad, which was like a big light bulb over my head saying, hey, you know, how have you not thought of this before kind of mentality. But then once I was trying to get into the weeds and actually learn how to do it, it was bigger pockets. Once I fell into bigger pockets, you know, I joined the community. They have now multiple podcasts. When I first started listening, it was just the main one. But listen to the podcast, they have webinars all the time. They have bpcon once a year, which is huge. And they have so many talks and, and different experts in all the different fields that you could potentially be interested in. The one thing I would suggest is everyone's going to be doing something different. And that doesn't mean that you need to do the same as everyone else. Pick what feels right for you and what your personality is and what you think will be the best version of what you bring to the industry. And you know, like earlier I said I produce commercials and that's almost like a customer service industry where I'm making sure that the client's happy and the agency's happy. And the director is getting what he wants out of what we're making. It relates to short term rentals a lot. So my transition into that and dealing with guests and, and contractors and whatnot was almost seamless because there's a lot of similar similarities there. So it worked well for me, but for someone else it might not be. And I know other people that, like, I tell them the things that I do and they're like, you know what, that sounds great, but I couldn't deal with that. And so that's either you're bringing on a co host or a property manager and you're not dealing with it, or you're picking another asset, which is. There's no wrong answer. There's just so many ways to make money within the real estate investing community. So you just need to pick the ones that's right for you.

So true. And so many people worry about, you know, oh, this person's already doing this, or this person's already, you know, using that area or trying that strategy. But the trouble is that when you first start to uncover a lot of these strategies and you listen to amazing podcasts like Bigger Pockets, you're under this impression that everything's kind of been done before, and to a degree it has. But the one thing that's different is you, isn't it? You're, you're bringing your own experiences to the table, your own preferences, you'll perhaps go to a different area with a different strategy. And ultimately there's a lot of opportunity, isn't there? And there's a lot of information available to go out and, and apply into the real world so you can change your life and create wealth from, from short term and long term rental.

So, and speak speaking of that, it's like if you hear someone that's doing something and it really speaks to you, it's okay to follow their blueprint as well. Yeah, yeah. You know, and I did that to a certain degree and that's kind of how I grew. But it's like, it's okay. It's like, like you said, all this stuff has, has been done before. It's just how you apply it to your own version. But it's like you could look at other successful people and be like, I want to mimic that and you can't.

And the great thing is in the end it becomes a sort of soup of, of everybody else's kind of like techniques with your own personality mixed in. And that becomes your own blueprint in the long run, doesn't it? Which is, which is cool. So yeah, I've really enjoyed this, Josh. It's been a fantastic update for everybody listening. How can we find out more? How can we come and check out your brand or come follow you on your socials?

What would you like to promote on Instagram? Bunkhouse Worldwide is my company name and the handle email. It's joshunkhouse worldwide.com and yeah, I mean Instagram is probably the best way to kind of follow along progress of things. As soon as I finish those five habits, I'll be posting some more updates about that. And yeah, you could reach out via email and let me know if you have any questions or comments or whatever.

Oh, thank you so much and thank you too for listening to this on the Boostly podcast. I know there's a lot of places you can put your attention and really thank you for putting it with us. Please do share this with friends and family who would like to listen to this. And yeah, we'll, we'll, we're about to call it a day. But before we do, Josh, we normally end with a mantra or saying, but I know we've got that from your first one. So instead what I'd love to ask is what advice would you go back and give yourself? You know, at the start of your journey?

Don't be afraid to take action. And ultimately I did actually do it, but it took me quite some time to do it. So I, you know, it's like jumping in is not a bad thing and, and I know it's scary, but action is the best way to progress.

What a great way to bring it to a close. Thank you very much, Josh and we'll see you on the next one.